Interviewer: MR.
Interviewer: ROWEN, WHAT DID YOU GET YOUR DEGREE IN?
Rowen: Oh, well, I went to MIT and got a degree in Industrial Engineering and then went to Oxford University, got another degree, a, so, Bachelor of Philosophy, actually, in, a strange Oxford degree, in Economics.
Interviewer: HOW DID YOU CHARACTERIZE YOURSELF PROFESSIONALLY BEFORE YOU WENT INTO THE PENTAGON?
Rowen: Well, I had worked at the RAND Corporation quite a lot during the 1950s, and had learned a lot about strategy.
Rowen: I'd worked a lot on nuclear weapons, nuclear forces nuclear weapons, some extent, on international affairs fair amount on economics, so I would say I was basically an economist.
Interviewer: [INTERRUPTION]
Rowen: Right.
Interviewer: ...lISTEN TO THE HORROR OF CURTIS LEMAY THAT YOU GUYS HAD ALREADY PASSED JUDGMENT ON...
Rowen: Ah, yes, right.
Interviewer: STEVE.
Interviewer: SO, IF YOU COULD JUST SAY, I WAS AN ECONOMIST, OR WHATEVER, BUT INTERESTED...
Rowen: Well, my basic training was in economics, but I had worked at the RAND Corporation on and off for the previous ten years, working on questions of nuclear forces and their use so I knew rather a lot about that business as an analyst.
Interviewer: WHAT WAS LIFE LIKE AT RAND? I DON'T THINK PEOPLE HAVE ANY SENSE...
Rowen: Well, the 1950s was a very exciting period of time.
Rowen: It was a, it was a sort of experiment.
Rowen: The Air Force set up an arrangement with RAND, which is a non-profit corporation, had gotten some money from the Ford Foundation to set up in business, but the Air Force was the principal client, and it attracted very good people - RAND had gotten very good people, had a very broad charter to work on tech...
Rowen: problems of technology economics politics, and —, as a result, there was a flourishing, intellectual, became a really quite significant intellectual center in all of these matters.
Rowen: Uh, it was a very exciting place to be.
Interviewer: WHAT WERE THE MAIN CONCERNS OF RAND--NUCLEAR STRATEGY OR VULNERABILITY? OR HOW DID YOU RESPOND TO THE MISSILE AGE?
Rowen: Well, it wasn't a matter of responding to the mid...
Rowen: missile age.
Rowen: It was part of leading the way.
Rowen: I mean, RAND was doing a lot of work on technology a lot of work on missiles, a lot, a lot, a lot of work on the new technologies...
Interviewer: THE MISSILE AGE USHERED IN A LOT OF NEW CONCERNS.
Rowen: Right.
Interviewer: BUT HOW DID YOU AT RAND VIEW THESE CONCERNS? VIEW THE MISSILE AGE AND THIS CHALLENGE?
Rowen: It, it was a matter of really exploring what were the technical possibilities and what one, could one do with the technology.
Rowen: How were they going to change the world, how they were going to change it militarily, how they were going to change it politically.
Rowen: Uh, all of this was proceeding in parallel.
Rowen: It wasn't as though someone had invented all of this stuff, and we were among those trying to figure out what to do with it.
Rowen: It was all, we were involved in the invention, itself.
Rowen: Uh, it, rocketry, the uses of space the nuclear weapons, thermonuclear weapons the — It was all proceeding along everything was new, practically.
Rowen: A lot of ideas that now seem very commonplace were not, didn't exist in the early fifties, and some of that, some of the invention that went on both technically and conceptually, took place at RAND during the fifties.
Interviewer: WHAT WERE THESE IDEAS?
Rowen: Oh a very important one is one that Albert Wohlstetter is the principal author of, and this is the making of the distinction between the first strike, second strike distinction, nuclear forces.
Rowen: It seems pretty elementary in retrospect, but somebody had to think that through rather systematically.
Rowen: Uh, that was a very important one.
Rowen: The just the general importance of having to protect it, nuclear force, was one that we did the – I'd say — the pioneering work on during the during the 1950s.
Interviewer: WHY WAS THERE A NEED FOR A PROTECTIVE NUCLEAR FORCE?
Rowen: Well, at the beginning of the fifties, the Soviet Union had...
Interviewer: ( ) I JUST WAS...
Rowen: Oh, at the beginning of the 1950s, there was no threat from the Soviet Union.
Interviewer: I'M SORRY.
Rowen: At that
Interviewer: I'M SORRY.
Rowen: The well Albert Wohlstetter was responsible, was the, key person in developing a number of these ideas, and one of them was the distinction between the first strike and the second strike.
Rowen: Now, that was — became an important distinction, important concern during the 1950s because during that period, the threat from the Soviet Union grew enormously.
Rowen: At the beginning of that period, it was there was no threat from the Soviet Union to the United States, directly to the United States.
Rowen: At the end of that period, by 1960, there was a quite formidable threat that emerged, was the process of emerging from the Soviet Union.
Rowen: In fact, it had emerged.
Rowen: So that having a ...protected American capacity to retaliate became very, very crucial, and the principal work done on this in the United States intellectual work and technical work, was done at RAND, under the, a lot of this under the direction of Albert Wohlstetter.
Interviewer: WHAT WAS THE, WAS THE FIRST SURPRISE ATTACK, WAS THAT THE MAIN...?
Rowen: That was one certain major concern because it had not ever been a problem the United States faced, other than at Pearl Harbor, but than this was with nuclear weapons, which were another matter indeed.
Rowen: A very small force could inflict enormous damage on our own strategic force, which, at the beginning of the 1950s, was an just a handful of air bases, and not alert, could easily be wiped out.
Rowen: Hell, at that time, the beginning, the Soviets did not have an ability to, to strike, but by the end, or towards the middle of the 1950s, rather, they, they did.
Rowen: They had — were developing a capacity to do this, and, of course, when ballistic missiles came along after Sputnik and we could see that the — this was coming fast.
Rowen: Then their ability to have a — deliver nuclear weapons without any warning, or very little warn, inadequate warnings, became very great, a very, very great problem.
Rowen: What to do about that became a serious business, and RAND did a lot of the work on that, and the Air Force responded quite fast, quite rapidly.
Interviewer: WHAT WAS THE ANSWER?
Rowen: It was a combination of things.
Rowen: At the, at the beginning and throughout the ear—, early part, mid part of the 1950s, the Air Force was planning on doing going to war, so to speak, in the way they had during World War II, which was to pick up and go abroad, go to overseas bases in, in, in Britain, North Africa Spain Greenland Guam, and so on, a process that would have taken weeks...
Rowen: At the beginning of the 1950s.
Rowen: The Air Force [INTERRUPTION] At, at, at the beginning, and well into, the 1950s, the Air Force principally planned to, to, to operate as they had during World War II, which was to do their bombing from overseas bases from Britain, North Africa Greenland and out into the Pacific, which meant that they had to pick up all of their material and their airplanes and go overseas and set up shop and operate from there, in large part.
Rowen: That was fine until the time came when the Soviet Union had the ability to drop nuclear warheads, nuclear explosives, on those, on those bases, and not only on our overseas ones, but on, on our bases at, here at home, in a surprise, a possible surprise attack.
Rowen: RAND very early on people at RAND, felt project that Albert Wohlstetter had noted first of all that operating overseas was really a bad idea because the Soviet Union could readily reach those bases, and that we should move to different mode of operation that didn't depend on these major overseas operating bases.
Rowen: Then we focused on the problem that at home, the possibility of a surprise attack there.
Rowen: The Air Force responded quite rapidly to these observations, which basically said to improve,...
Rowen: had to improve warning of a possible Soviet attack—this was in the pre-missile era — and have a higher alert state.
Rowen: There were other steps as well, but those are...main ones.
Rowen: And when the, when the missile era came along one had to do other things as well, which became, later became commonplace.
Rowen: The, the sheltering of our own missiles, the Minuteman missiles, and their dispersal, blast, blast shelter and dispersal, and operating at a higher state -- all of this emerged from this line of work, became embedded in our, our whole strategic posture.
Interviewer: WAS, VULNERABILITY WAS THE CHIEF CONCERN?
Rowen: Yes, it was the Soviet capacity to attack grew, vulnerability became...
Rowen: a principal concern.
Interviewer: DID YOU INVENT THE HARDENED SILO? WAS THAT YOUR —?
Rowen: The direct at first, we looked at the question of...hardening aircraft.
Rowen: That was clearly an invention, and clear—that technology then later on was transferred to the hardening of missile silos.
Rowen: That's right.
Rowen: The earliest work was done under, at RAND.
Rowen: In fact, there's a well-known structural engineer in New York, Paul Weidlinger, who did the first work on blast sheltering under, at RAND, at RAND, and shelter could be done.
Rowen: It was first applied in a serious to of course, to the Minuteman missiles.
Interviewer: IS, UH.
Interviewer: UH —...WHAT'S A GOOD METAPHOR FOR THE STATE OF VULNERABILITY THAT EXISTED THEN, AND IS IT ...OF A HIGH NOON SITUATION WHERE THE...GOING...
Interviewer: DESIRABLE TO GO FIRST?
Rowen: Well, I don't think anybody would ever just for the, for the fun of it decide to go launch a nuclear attack on anybody else.
Rowen: It's not —obviously a very grave step.
Rowen: It's one, however, that one should worry about if the circumstances arose such that, the Soviet Union might think that it could succeed in such a strike, if we were really so vulnerable, and if events occurred in the world somewhere that they feared they might in the future, that it would be might be tempting just to wipe out in one blow the American strategic force, which was, at that time, was concentrated only at about thirty airbases.
Rowen: Uh, and I mean, it's a Pearl Harbor like situation.
Rowen: The Japanese, after all, earlier had gotten tempted and had yielded to the temptation to strike us and it happened.
Rowen: Nell, we could see the same sort of—we thought it unhealthy—we believed it unhealthy to remain in that kind of condition, and the Air Force agreed.
Interviewer: WHEN YOU FIRST CAME INTO THE PENTAGON, WHAT WAS OUR POLICY FOR DEFENDING EUROPE?
Rowen: Policy for defending Europe, which should have been inherited from the Eisenhower administration, was one that placed a great deal of reliance on the first use of nuclear weapons, and the and in the event of a Soviet invasion of Europe.
Rowen: Soviets were judged to have superiority on the ground the ability to invade Europe successfully, and the main deterrent to that, which --
Rowen: Yeah, I can tell.
Rowen: Ah, this has been proving an absolute zoo.
Interviewer: [INTERRUPTION AND RESTART])
Rowen: The policy inherited from the Eisenhower administration was one that placed great weight on the first use by the United States of nuclear weapons, because the Soviets were judged to be superior on the ground, that they would succeed if they attacked Europe.
Rowen: Uh, the uh,...our administration did believe in having a strong army there, and we had encouraged the Europeans to have a, a strong military forces, as well.
Rowen: It wasn't a pure nuclear deterrent strategy, but still there was great weight placed on the nuclear deterrence.
Rowen: Uh, that was changed under Kennedy.
Rowen: I mean, the Kennedy administration just changed that.
Rowen: And in fact, I was involved in the drafting of what was to have—a revision, really, of the basic national security policy of the Eisenhower administration.
Rowen: Walt Rostow and I did the principal drafting of this, and in it we changed, we clearly deliberately reversed, in the language, the policy from primary use, primary use on nuclear weapons, to primary use on non-nuclear weapons.
Rowen: That was a 180-degree turn in policy.
Rowen: That never got quite formally adopted in the same way it had been in the Eisenhower administration.
Rowen: There was no basic national security policy document as such, but the policy shift was quite clear.
Rowen: It was announced in many other ways the Kennedy administration, to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons, but not to zero.
Rowen: I mean, it was recognized at the time that we didn't have the means couldn't totally get out of the nuclear weapons business for the defense of Europe.
Rowen: There was always the possibility that the Soviet Union would use them first, and that had to be deterred.
Rowen: Uh, but there were, nonetheless, a marked shift.
Rowen: That was probably the single most important defense shift of the, of the Kennedy administration, defense policy shift.
Interviewer: WHAT WERE THE––
Interviewer: ...WHAT WAS THE REASON FOR REJECTING EISENHOWER'S RELIANCE ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS?
Rowen: The main reason for rejecting Eisen—, the Eisenhower administration reliance on nuclear weapons, which was based on the Soviet superiority on the ground of conventional forces, was the growth in the Soviet nuclear capacity.
Rowen: Uh, it was all very well in the early fifties, when the United States had, still had a, well, initially, a monopoly, and then a near monopoly of nuclear weapons, to say we were going to use them if there was an attack because we couldn't be retaliated against, but by the early sixties, we, it was clear that we could be retaliated against.
Rowen: It wasn't such an attractive policy to, to say well, we're going to use nuclear weapons.
Rowen: I mean, that wasn't so obviously smart.
Interviewer: WHY?
Rowen: Uh, because it wasn't--for one thing, it wasn't so credible.
Rowen: If you're facing an opponent who is building nuclear weapons in sizable numbers himself, it's not so clear that it's...very credible, that it will be believable, that it would in fact deter an opponent.
Rowen: And, of course, if deterrence failed and you actually got into it...
Interviewer: LET'S START WITH THE...OUT OF THE CREDIBILITY
Rowen: The, the, the, the credibility of the deterrent seemed to many people to be weaker as the Soviet nuclear posture grew because the likelihood that we would actually use them as a rational act, as a rational move, was diminishing, so we perceived, so many people perceived, so many Europeans perceived.
Rowen: Uh, they didn't like the change of policy so much, but they...[ready to] perceive this.
Rowen: Uh, and if actually were to happen, if there were something happened, deterrence failed, and the Soviets did act, then to use nuclear weapons, actually to use them, seemed also less attractive because this use would be two-sided.
Rowen: Very unhealthy.
Interviewer: WHAT FAITH DID YOU HAVE THAT NATO COULD, THAT WE COULD RELY ON NON-NUCLEAR WEAPONS? THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM STILL REMAINED THAT THE WARSAW PACT WAS, HAD OVERWHELMING SUPERIORITY.
Rowen: So it had seemed at the time, and the, on the other hand, the United States and its—
Interviewer: YOU'VE GOT TO EMBODY THE SENSE OF MY QUESTION.
Rowen: Yeah, OK, sure.
Rowen: Uh, we did judge that the Soviet Union had over— We judged that the Soviet Union had overwhelm—well, overwhelming may be too large, too, too powerful a way to put it—exaggerated—but it's, it had a superior position on the ground, in Europe, but it wasn't an inherent superiority.
Rowen: It wasn't based on having a larger population, a higher gross national product by comparison with Western Europe and the United States, because, after all, Western Europe and the United States combined had more people, had higher technology, more industry, more output.
Rowen: Uh, we, we, we were clearly within our means to do this.
Rowen: So we had the means, we had the, but we, it wasn't being realized, and part of the reason it wasn't being realized was that we were using nuclear weapons as a crutch.
Rowen: More bang for the buck was the idea in the Eisenhower administration.
Rowen: Nell, that was sort of a crutch, and the idea was to re—, not totally dispose of the crutch because we couldn't do that, but at least to rely on it much less, and just to— let's build up our for—, our, our conventional forces.
Interviewer: SO THE POLICY WAS TO RELY ON MORE NON-NUCLEAR FORCES AND YOU ARE CONFIDENT THAT WE CAN DO IT? SO IT WAS MORE A MATTER OF WILL THAN OF INHERENT CAPACITY TO?
Rowen: The West had the resources, this was a question of using the resources in a less risky way, more effective way to deter the Soviet Union from making any moves.
Interviewer: KHRUSHCHEV WAS BEING AGGRESSIVE REALLY BEFORE YOU CAME INTO THE PENTAGON AND THREATENING OUR ACCESS TO RIGHTS TO BERLIN.
Interviewer: WE'RE YOU HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT? WERE YOU CONFIDENT WE COULD DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT?
Rowen: Berlin was a great concern.
Rowen: Uh, our local sort of tactical situation in Berlin was very unfavorable.
Rowen: It's an island was surrounded by Soviet Armed Forces.
Rowen: And so that one couldn't be very comfortable, feel very comfortable about the situation at Berlin.
Rowen: And there was a concern that the access to Berlin would get interrupted and interfered with And in fact the Soviets and Ea--East Germans did do things which impeded access to some extent and there was a fear that they might in a big way in which we would have a big crisis.
Rowen: So it was a big concern.
Interviewer: WELL, KENNEDY MADE A NATIONAL TELEVISION ADDRESS ON JULY 25th, SAYING IN IT, AN ATTACK ON BERLIN OR AN ATTACK ON NATO IS AN ATTACK ON US ALL.
Interviewer: UH, WHAT WERE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
Rowen: About we could do was to uh--in effect provide, try—keep open the--the roots to Berlin to use such military force of graduated military force to—to assure that.
Rowen: The Soviet's could then step up and further.
Rowen: We could step up and process in the effect of escalation.
Rowen: Uh, and at some point the hope and belief was that the Soviets wouldn't press it because if they kept pressing it was going to be war.
Interviewer: SO YOU HOPE THAT SUCCESSIVE SHOWS OF MILITARY FORCE ON OUR PART WOULD SCARE THE SOVIETS.
Interviewer: OFF, OTHERWISE THERE'D BE WAR.
Interviewer: WELL, WHAT IF IT DIDN'T?
Rowen: Ha, ha, that was of course the worry.
Rowen: But the judgment was turned out to correct that the Soviet Union didn't want to—did not want to get into a war with the West.
Rowen: But it was a game of chicken and that the Soviets in effect wouldn't press it.
Rowen: Uh...
Interviewer: WHAT WERE OUR OPTIONS?
Rowen: Our options weren't too good.
Rowen: Our—our options weren't too good, because of the local military superiority that the uh—uh Soviet's had.
Rowen: But basically what we could do was be to put in more and more force, which by the way, the British and the French and the Germans, everybody agreed we're all working this out together.
Rowen: Uh--conceivably if it came to a war then one had to consider what the war might look like and so on.
Rowen: And that brought us back to the possibility of using nuclear weapons but that was never seen as a major element in the strategy for Berlin, because it seemed so remote a possibility.
Interviewer: IF YOU HAD TO USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS WHAT WAS THE WAR PLAN AT THAT POINT? WAS STILL EISENHOWER'S SIOP?
Rowen: Well that was being debated on a separate channel.
Rowen: In the Berlin contingency planning arena, the ways in which nuclear weapons would be used, to my recollection, were never seriously considered, just didn't get on the agenda, well seemed to be too remote a possibility.
Interviewer: DID BERLIN, UH--UH, WHAT DID THAT CRISIS DO FOR YOUR, YOUR THINKING ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF CONVENTIONAL FORCES?
Rowen: Well, I think it reinforced, in the case of minds of many of us--the idea that Ber— Berlin reinforced in the minds of many of us the importance of having...a variety of means of using force --in general for--suit our interests.
Rowen: Without nuclear weapons being involved.
Rowen: It was very important to be able to deal with that particular situation or others like it, without the nuclear threat which was not seemed to be a useful one.
Interviewer: DID YOU PARTICIPATE IN PLANS TO--FOR THE USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS IF IT CAME TO THAT?
Rowen: In connection with Berlin, there were no that I can I recall.
Rowen: I mean somebody somewhere might have been doing it, but I was intimately involved in the Berlin contingency planning and the—the and I don't recall any plans in the use of nuclear weapons.
Interviewer: DID YOU EVER DISCUSS WITH--WERE YOU PRIVY TO THE DECISION MAKING TO--TO BUILD OPTIONS INTO THE WAR PLAN IN TERMS OF STRATEGIC WAR WITH THE SOVIETS, THE COUNTERFORCE, NO CITIES DISCUSSION?
Rowen: Uh, my office, the office of the International Security Affairs did not have any direct operational responsibility that ranged from the President through the Secretary of Defense to the military.
Rowen: And this was a subject the military guarded then and guard now very carefully as the preserve of their own.
Rowen: However, I did urge on my boss Paul Nitze Robert McNamara early on in 1961, the importance of creating more, more options in our—in our nuclear planning.
Rowen: Uh, the it was very clear that having sort of one main choice the use of nuclear weapons just a huge attack made no sense whatsoever, would never be done, would be if done, it would have been totally destructive of everything that we.
Rowen: It made no sense.
Rowen: And that uh--so it was important to have a variety of possible uses, less than total—total use of these weapons.
Rowen: And that point was urged on McNamara and he accepted that.
Interviewer: HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT SECRETARY MCNAMARA'S ANN ARBOR SPEECH WHEN HE SAID THAT WAR WOULD BE FOUGHT IF IT EVER CAME TO IT, MORE THE WAY WARS HAD BEEN TRADITIONALLY FOUGHT WITH THE MILITARY FIGHTING THE MILITARY AND AVOIDING CIVILIANS?
Rowen: Well, I was centrally involved in urging that general position on him again with support from Paul Nitze and others.
Rowen: Uh, and this was all part and parcel of the notion that in order to preserve a nuclear deterrent principally for the defense of Europe, we had to have a means of using these weapons which wasn't totally and obviously suicidal.
Rowen: Uh, The idea then was to have the possibility to have the option of using--our using nuclear weapons only against military forces in--in very restrictive ways not indiscriminately killing innocent civilians and other people, should being such damage on ourselves and on the West Europeans which made it a very a bad idea.
Rowen: Uh, to have that as a possibility in a somewhat restricted use, or restricted for deterrence reasons primarily.
Rowen: That line of argument was developed and laid out in considerable detail at a secret NATO meeting in Athens in early 1962.
Rowen: And then parts of it were presented publicly at Ann Arbor.
Rowen: Well, if—anytime you do anything with the Europeans the Americans change their policy line in any direction whatsoever, there's a problem.
Rowen: There's always trouble if you just change it.
Rowen: Doesn't matter which way you go, more nuclear weapons, less nuclear weapons, doesn't matter.
Rowen: So, this was sort of shock of a new idea.
Interviewer: SO MCNAMARA MADE HIS SPEECH AT ATHENS AND ANN ARBOR, HOW DID THE EUROPEANS REACT TO THIS?
Rowen: Well, they didn't react to it too warmly, it wasn't really...
Interviewer: THE EUROPEANS.
Rowen: The Europeans—the Europeans reacted to his Athens speech not too enthusiastically.
Interviewer: [REPHRASES THE QUESTION]
Rowen: No I was at Athens uh--and had worked on that speech and um was there to see the reaction of the Europeans and i—the reaction wasn't particularly enthusiastic.
Rowen: Uh, I think not because the European response was so much a thoughtful and considerate response.
Rowen: See we were arguing two things.
Rowen: One was we were saying you have to build up your conventional forces, that means spending money.
Rowen: That meant perhaps, weakening the which they thought as resting on nuclear weapons as it had, so they--that was bad.
Rowen: And McNamara was also saying and if nuclear weapons are used we ought to consider using them in this much more selective way more discriminate way.
Rowen: And they wanted to think about that one before endorsing it a lot.[INTERRUPTION AND RESTART] Well, I was at Athens with the meeting of the NATO ministers um, when McNamara presented these ideas.
Rowen: But there are two central ideas, that he presented.
Rowen: One was an elaboration on the importance of conventional, conventional posture.
Rowen: And the other idea was to the more selective use of nuclear weapons in case they had to be— planning a more selective use not necessarily just attacking cities, but attacking mi—military forces and in more—much more selective ways.
Rowen: And the Europeans were reacting to both of these messages.
Rowen: They were reacting to the idea that they were going to have to spend more money and among other things.
Rowen: And to the possible weakening of the deterrent as they saw it.
Rowen: But with this emphasis on conventional forces as well as to what seemed like odd ideas new ideas on the use of nuclear forces.
Rowen: So, they did not embrace these ideas immediately very warmly and wanted to think about that a good deal.
Interviewer: WHY DID THE EUROPEANS THINK THAT THIS WOULD WEAKEN THE DETERRENT?
Rowen: Their main concern on the deterrence front was that they re—any reduction, perceived reduction in the likelihood the United States would use nuclear weapons in the event of a Soviet attack would make it more likely the Soviets would move.
Rowen: They feared that the Soviet Union would still be dominant on the ground, it would still have superior force and with a reduced American threat of nuclear response that the chances were higher that the Soviets would attack.
Interviewer: HOW DID YOU ALLAY THEIR CONCERNS...THE EUROPEAN'S CONCERNS?
Rowen: Reason.
Rowen: Argument.
Rowen: Data...
Interviewer: WE ALLAYED THE...
Rowen: Yes, we allayed the we tried very much to allay the European's concern through the presentation of data, through argument trying to be persuasive.
Rowen: Uh, you're never wholly persuasive, although by the by the late 1960s we had persuaded them to change the basic NATO planning document.
Rowen: So-called MC 14/3 is the new document, which is in effect, the—a way in which the Europeans in effect accepted the basic Kennedy, Johnson administration position on paying more alliance on non-nuclear forces and selective nuclear responses too.
Rowen: But it took years of discussion and argumentation for them to do this.
Rowen: And they never really have spent the money that we had hoped they would on conventional forces.
Interviewer: DID YOU EXPECT THIS ANN ARBOR SPEECH WAS REALLY UH, ASKING THE SOVIETS TO COOPERATE NOW.
Interviewer: WHAT REASON DID YOU THINK THEY WOULD COOPERATE AT THAT TIME WHEN THEY—WE HAD OVERWHELMING FORCE?
Rowen: The Athens speech was not premised on the notion that the Soviets would cooperate, they would do what was in their self-interest, it was based on a concept of self-interest that if they saw that they were faced with a overwhelming conventional force on the part of NATO, that they wouldn't attack.
Rowen: If they saw they were faced with a nuclear threat which was also very powerful, overwhelming, and which could be used at—by the West in the non-suicidal way, they might be used therefore.
Rowen: And therefore, they wouldn't get it, they wouldn't attack and they wouldn't use nuclear weapons first themselves.
Rowen: Entirely self-interest, not it—there's no, there's no concept of cooperation on the Soviet part involved here.
Interviewer: THIS WASN'T ESTABLISHING SOME RULES OF THE GAME?
Rowen: There was no concept of uh—there was no concept in this whole uh—Athens speech of rules of the game.
Rowen: Purely self-interest.
Interviewer: WAS THE MOTIVATION FOR THIS DE GAULLE, WASN'T THE CONCERN THAT IF WE WANTED TO HAVE CONTROLLED ESCALATION THERE HAS TO BE ONE FINGER ON THE BUTTON AND YOU WERE WORRIED ABOUT DE GAULLE?
Rowen: Uh, that wasn't--the concern about De Gaulle, and De--the French independent nuclear policy which by the way was not all that different from the British nuclear policy, they're essentially the same was not the principle concern, was not the principle motivator of this—this shift.
Rowen: It was to strengthen deterrence fundamentally.
Rowen: Um, there was concern about control however.
Rowen: Because in the event if it ever came to a crisis, if one had a number of in—in-independent actors anyone of whom could launch nuclear weapons, nuclear forces it could be very dangerous indeed one didn't know what might happen.
Rowen: So there was a concern about independent nuclear forces, but that was sort of a worry, it wasn't a central con—feature of this whole policy change by any means.
Interviewer: DOES THIS POLICY CHANGE REALLY RAND DOCTRINE IN ACTION, YOU MUST HAVE BEEN QUITE EXCITED?
Rowen: Well yes, it was a—this policy change was—a major one.
Rowen: Um, it was one in which there was a great deal of consensus with the United States in favor of it, not so much with the Europeans.
Rowen: And it seemed like the sound and fundamental thing to do and by the way, it has persisted and continued to this day, it has not--never been reversed by succeeding to administrations in the United States.
Rowen: Everyone has-- basically endorsed the emphasis on principle reliance on non-nuclear defense, for Europe and other areas, with the nuclear weapons more in the background.
Interviewer: HAS THE NOTION OF TARGETING YOUR ADVERSARIES MILITARY AND NUCLEAR FORCES AND AVOIDING CITIES CHANGED?
Rowen: That has gone through various vicissitudes from the—appeared in 1961 when--when McNamara ordered the development of more options.
Rowen: Uh, I would say that in general that distinction has been preserved, it has not been pursued as much as it might have been over the years for a number of reasons, that's fluctuated but as always it's continued.
Interviewer: SHORTLY AFTER THE ANN ARBOR SPEECH, MCNAMARA BEGAN TO GET—WHAT WAS THE REACTION IN THE UNITED STATES, HOW DID THE AIR FORCE SEE THIS?
Rowen: Well, I'm sure there was some people in the air force that saw this as an excuse for having more forces.
Rowen: There may military targets in the Soviet Union and they could--provided an opening of people who wanted to services always do—no—to get more, more forces so that was a factor but that's...that wasn't necessarily a decisive factor.
Rowen: I--I think that a major factor that intervened during the '60s, was the Cuban Missile Crisis which came as a great shock to a lot of people, including those in the administration.
Rowen: It seemed to bring us quite close to war with the Soviet Union and the possibility therefore of a nuclear war.
Rowen: I think that had a psychological effect over many people.
Rowen: And thereafter beginning in 1963 there was a ma--a major shift in the character and the tone of um, discussions about nuclear planning, nuclear forces.
Rowen: So there were several factors involved not just the— the budgetary one, but I think also the psychological one.
Interviewer: ...DID THE WAR PLAN EVER CHANGE?
Rowen: I believe that the basic instructions which were changed in...
Rowen: that the—the basic war plan instruction, guidance to the military was changed in 1961 as I recall um, and to make a distinction, a sharper distinction between targeting among three categories or forces was going to effect Soviet industry and effect cities, population, um, Soviet long range nuclear forces, the main threat to--nuclear threat to the United States.
Rowen: And the Soviet other Soviet military forces, the ones we'd be most centrally in the invasion for example.
Rowen: To—to—to make attacks options, distinguished among those three and focused on one not on the others.
Rowen: That was a fundamental development...
Interviewer: WHEN MCNAMARA BEGAN TO TALK ABOUT ASSURED DESTRUCTION AND DOWN PLAY COUNTERFORCE, WAS THAT ACCOMPANIED BY ANY NEW INSTRUCTIONS TO THE MILITARY AND ANY CHANGE IN THE WAR PLAN?
Rowen: I believe there's fundamental change in the planning instructions during the course, later on in—in the 1960s.
Rowen: Um, the--the subject wasn't pursued.
Rowen: In order to make this work, one had to—there was a lot of attention and detail and spending of money in certain ways which it really wasn't done, wasn't followed up --adequately in my opinion.
Rowen: But there was no reversal, there was no backing off of it either, it was sort of left there.
Rowen: Uh, the rhetoric changed of course.
Rowen: McNamara's rhetoric changed significantly during the course of the 1960s more in the emphasizing much more the likelihood that any nuclear attack, any nuclear conflict would result in total catastrophe.
Rowen: And more emphasis on having this assured destruction which really is a code word for getting lots of people and doing a lot of economic damage to the Soviet Union as the main deterrent.
Rowen: But the instructions were not; basic instructions to the military were not changed I believe.
Interviewer: ASSURED DESTRUCTION IS A PROCUREMENT CRITERION ISN'T IT?
Rowen: It had—that was an important motivation— important reason I believe for adopting it because it helped to provide— well, provided an argument for saying no to the military on buying more nuclear forces.
Rowen: And that's the...that it served that function.
Rowen: It--it was more than that.
Rowen: That was also seeing as a—a way of urn, telling the American people that any use of nuclear weapons was likely or almost certain to result in--in a great catastrophe and great devastation and that they--the politicians should not rely on nuclear threats so much.
Interviewer: SO IT REPRESENTED A REAL CHANGE IN MCNAMARA'S THINKING.
Rowen: I believe it did.
Rowen: Not whole, a great change because he was never enthusiastic about using nuclear forces.
Rowen: Nobody in the Kennedy administration was.
Rowen: But it nonetheless, did represent a shift of sorts.
Interviewer: WHAT SHIFT DID THIS REPRESENT AND HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT IT?
Rowen: Well I felt that the shift, the shift towards--much more emphasis on the assured destruction, later emerged...[INTERRUPTION] I felt the shift towards assured destruction was was—was really unfortunate.
Rowen: It--for the principle reason that it--it's hard to see how one could have an alliance system which inevitably had--was going to have to rely and did rely on the--on--on nuclear threats to some extent.
Rowen: The administration was trying to reduce this reliance but nonetheless it was there.
Rowen: It was incompatible between having that kind of an alliance and that kind of an alliance policy and one--and a policy which in effect was saying that if any nuclear weapons are used there's a high likelihood that everything is going to go up in--in a fireball that'll be in effect the use of nuclear weapons would be tantamount to national suicide for the United States.
Rowen: Well if that was the case we were not ever going to use nuclear weapons and we were going to have real problems with our alliances.
Interviewer: ...THAT THE BASIC DECLARATORY POLICY OF ANN ARBOR NEVER CHANGED?
Rowen: The it's very difficult in a large bureaucracy to uh—there are many people listening when the President speaks or Secretary of Defense speaks, lots of listeners out there.
Rowen: The Soviets are listening, the Europeans are listening, the American public is listening, people in Omaha are listening.
Rowen: And they're trying to figure out what's the guidance.
Rowen: It's difficult to have a private pol--private guidance, private policy.
Rowen: It's a very open system which is very different from the public guidance, it's very hard to do that in fact I think it's essentially impossible in our political system to do that.
Rowen: If it were the case that the military were being told to refine your— your options, your—your options, we'll work harder on being able to do um, with counter force being—being able to avoid cities and following up and every few months detailed instructions and follow-up and so on.
Rowen: At the same time, something quite inconsistent was being said publicly.
Rowen: That might have for budgetary reasons—that might have worked.
Rowen: It's conceivable that would have worked.
Rowen: That wasn't the case.
Rowen: Uh, the military were not being so instructed to keep pursuing this with great diligence and pursuing it.
Rowen: It was more or less left as it had been.
Rowen: It hadn't been—the instructions hadn't been remanded, but they weren't really being pursued and meanwhile the public rhetoric had gone in the direction of assured destruction and the belief, the expectation that—that of total destruction.
Interviewer: DID--WHAT DID YOU THINK OF MCNAMARA'S SHIFT TO ASSURED DESTRUCTION? YOU'VE WRITTEN THAT THERE ARE A LOT OF PROBLEMS WITH THIS.
Rowen: I think the shift to assured destruction had a lot of problems with it and the principle problem was how to reconcile it with an alliance with all—our alliance situation, our alliance commitments, because while it was deplorable, the fact is that we were still very much depended on the threat to use nuclear weapons and first, in the response to a Soviet attack against Europe.
Rowen: And here the Secretary of Defense was saying that very likely any such use would result in total catastrophe for the United States and for Western Europe and for the Soviet Union.
Rowen: The chances that we would do that were very small that we would actually use them if we so; would—we'd be zero, if we thought that was going to happen.
Rowen: And the worry was that the Europeans and the Soviet also could perceive that and it was a kind of bad for the de— deterrence of the Soviet Union and bad for the health of the alliance to be going around saying these things.
Interviewer: WELL, OTHERS SAY THAT THE TALK ABOUT ASSURED DESTRUCTION IS—SIMPLY THIS IS A PROCUREMENT CRITERION.
Interviewer: IT HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW WEAPON...
Interviewer: THE WAR PLAN NEVER CHANGED?
Rowen: I believe that McNamara was concerned to try and hold down the incentives enough so and so the deal with the arguments at the military for spending more on nuclear forces, in fact I'm sure was important.
Rowen: The difficult—an--and as far as I know, instructions to Omaha were not changed.
Rowen: On the other hand, um, they really weren't pursued.
Rowen: The policy of uh--having more options wasn't pursued vigorously as far as I understand it during the course of the '60s and if one took that policy seriously of having options, nuclear options, seriously one would have to pursue it.
Rowen: One would have to do a lot of things to make it work and meanwhile the rhetoric was heading in the opposite direction.
Rowen: So it was rather difficult to reconcile those—those two.
Rowen: Um, and it the later administrations that got picked up again at various points in time, but not under McNamara, I believe, not during the Kennedy-Johnson administration, essentially.
Interviewer: ...DO YOU THINK MCNAMARA JUST GAVE UP ON NUCLEAR OPTIONS?
Rowen: I suspect that as the time went on and perhaps it affected, probably affected by the Cuban Missile Crisis experience to--to realize that the--the—the main thing was to avoid really any use of nuclear weapons.
Rowen: I mean we all could agree to that.
Rowen: That wasn't really in dispute.
Rowen: But that was—sort of became an overriding concern, I--I believe, that—that not only understanding that and advocating that in—in the policy community but to the American people, to everybody, broadcasting that message, nuclear weapons are essentially not usable came to be seen as the overriding concern.
Rowen: Uh, and he was a man of great rationality and believed in options as--as you suggested and the and that didn't go away.
Rowen: ...that thought, but the overriding concern was to get-put that nuclear weapons business as far in the background as one could possibly put--put the—
Interviewer: IS THAT SMART? I MEAN PEOPLE LIKE YOU HAVE WORKED AT RAND AND—AND THOUGHT ABOUT THESE THINGS.
Interviewer: YOU DON'T HAVE THE LUXURY OF PUTTING IT AWAY DO YOU?
Rowen: Uh, the idea of putting nuclear weapons in the background in fact as far in the background as one possibly can does seem very sensible.
Rowen: It seems very sensible for the very obvious reason that the Soviet Union overtime is building up a great nuclear force.
Rowen: And dealing in a—in a war with such a power a.
Rowen: very, very dangerous business indeed, if one was lucky.
Rowen: At best it would be quite bad.
Rowen: And at worst it could be totally catastrophic.
Rowen: So not relying on nuclear weapons is always like a very sensible thing to do.
Rowen: On the other hand, there's more than one player, we are not the only one to decide these matters.
Rowen: There is an adversary.
Rowen: There is the Soviet Union.
Rowen: Not to mention the Chinese have nuclear weapons and the British and the French, other countries coming along pro--probably.
Rowen: So we don't totally determine this ourselves.
Rowen: We have to look to u--look to others.
Rowen: I believe that there has been, there was at the time, has been since, a--great misunderstanding uh--we were simply wrong on how the Soviet Union would deal with— the policy the Soviet Union would adopt with regard to nuclear weapons and nuclear forces.
Rowen: Uh, McNamara basically took the position that the Soviet Union would quickly come to realize that--that nuclear weapons made as an element of policies, instrument of policy, made no sense for the Soviet Union.
Rowen: Just as he had concluded, they didn't make sense for the United States.
Rowen: We were sort of stuck with them, but...
Rowen: didn't make sense.
Rowen: The Soviet Union really didn't—it turns out as we learn gradually, slowly, painfully, during the course of the '60s and especially in the '70s, didn't adopt that position.
Rowen: So we were sort of wrong in reading the Soviet side of this.
Rowen: Uh, that was one of my concerns early on--during this/at that period of time, that we could just decide this unilaterally.
Rowen: We had to have a correct appreciation of the uh—of our competitor in the Soviet Union.
Rowen: And that the line we were adopting uh--was likely to get us into trouble, as indeed it did to some extent.
Interviewer: WELL WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE PREFERRED TO SEE MCNAMARA DO IN THE LATTER PART OF THIS?
Rowen: I would have preferred that he had what I'd like--would have preferred seeing the administration do and it was not just the Secretary of Defense.
Rowen: The President is the Commander in Chief and he has the ultimate responsibility for these things, was to have pursued more consistently the dual policy of working on the non-nuclear side of things, conventional, which was done.
Rowen: That--that didn't continue, and on the nuclear side to--uh pursue much more the—the policy of having--of having options, of having--making distinctions of not having --as what in effect amounted to a suicidal threat.
Rowen: That really wasn't done, wasn't pursued adequately.
Rowen: Uh, I would not argue that should have been the main instrument of foreign policy or defense policy, is just something that is worth attending to, and it wasn't done.
Interviewer: MCNAMARA DIDN'T—HE DIDN'T ASK FOR MONEY, DID HE TELL THE PENTAGON TO SORT OF COOL OFF ON THIS, OR WHAT HAPPENED?
Rowen: But, what was needed to implement the policy included among other things just to give an example paying a lot more attention to the command and control system--the--for the—for nuclear forces.
Rowen: To make that a very robust system, to make it much more survivable and responsive, to making it a much more effective system.
Rowen: Well there have been many critics who've come out in recent years criticizing the failure to pay adequate attention to the command and control system, the nuclear command and control system.
Rowen: And I believe those critics much—of what they say is correct.
Rowen: And that had we taken more seriously the uh—the possibility of uh--the an--the Ann Arbor story--the Athens story in fully implementing it, we would have uh--done much more to—to improve the command and control system then we did.
Rowen: That's just an example, but there are others as well.
Interviewer: CHECK OFF THREE OR FOUR THINGS THAT COULD HAVE BEEN PERCEIVED VIGOROUSLY IN THE '60S THAT WEREN'T.
Rowen: The posture did change in some ways that were useful, but more could have been done.
Rowen: There's this great myth that over time the uh—total destructive power of our nuclear force has grown, it hasn't it reached its peak in terms of the total megatonnage in the military--of our nuclear force had reached its peak actually in the late 1950s and has been coming down ever since as the result of smaller warheads being introduced, though much improved accuracy of weapons.
Rowen: All of this made possible a um, uh--a much more discriminate policy for the planned use of nuclear weapons.
Rowen: Uh, it made possible much more selective use.
Rowen: For example against Soviet forces it might be attempting to invade Europe and doing so without destroying all of Eastern Europe, which obviously we wouldn't want to do.
Rowen: Um, we could have done much more to refine the plans in that regard.
Rowen: And we could have done more to make our weapons more accurate and pay much more attention to accuracy, pay much more attention to reducing the of nuclear weapons.
Rowen: We were pushing in that direction.
Rowen: We could have done more.
Rowen: I don't mean that nothing was done.
Rowen: Obviously we were reducing the indiscriminate destructiveness of our weapons.
Rowen: We could have as time...
Interviewer: ...DON'T THEY JUST ENCOURAGE USE? OR DO THEY MAKE IT A MORE CREDIBLE DETERRENT?
Rowen: The--beg--the refinements of options, the use, the possibility of using weapons in ways which are not clearly suicidal, uh—increase the deterrence.
Rowen: The uh--likelihood that we will de—any president of the United States would order the use of nuclear weapons in--under circumstances is un--in ways which would mean it--at all likely maybe even—a probability that the United States is going to be totally devastated, means it will never occur and therefore there's no deterrent or at least it's a weaker deterrent, should perhaps, shouldn't say there's no deterrent, but at least it's weaker.
Rowen: So the thrust of this whole uh—approach from the very beginning when I say--I take the beginning, 1961, to this very day, has been to increase the deterrent of any Soviet move.
Rowen: And particularly including Soviet use of nuclear weapons itself for—for first use of Soviet Union, increase the deterrent.
Interviewer: SO USE OPTIONS DON'T NECESSARILY—YOU THINK USE OPTIONS MAKE WAR LESS LIKELY?
Rowen: They make war less likely, that's precisely the point.
Rowen: People like to use the word stability, that's used and misused a lot, but arguably anything that makes a war less likely increases stability.
Rowen: Seem to me and I think to many people over the years that having uh--ways of posing a threat in the use of nuclear forces and retaliation to a Soviet move, we're not going to go off and cause a war with anybody.
Rowen: Uh, in--uh, makes it a more believable threat and therefore there's less likely that anybody's going to move against our interests.
Interviewer: ...HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT THIS?
Rowen: In about '67, in 1967 when McNamara articulated the notion that it that we should not rely on—on—on defenses so much um I was not in the Pentagon, I'd long since left and wasn't so intimately involved I supposed that the conclusions arrived at by Glenn Kent, that this was not a good use of resources to spend a lot on active defenses of civil defenses.
Rowen: But it was probably within it's framework and given the technology of the time correct um, the uh—uhhhh, there have been ways for the Soviets to--overcome the then possible ballistic missile defenses and civil defenses have always been difficult to make work.
Rowen: Although Herman Kahn did some path breaking work showing that one in fact could do quite a lot with civil defense Uh, the basic problem I have there with that sort of conclusion is that it--and at the time some concern about it, was that it really rests on an assumption that your adversary is going to really try and kill a lot of Americans.
Rowen: Why should he do that when he knows that if that—if he does that he—he's going to get a huge number of Russians killed.
Rowen: Well, vice versa, why should we go around killing a lot of Russians knowing that for sure they're going to be a lot of Americans killed.
Rowen: We each have self-interest in avoiding doing that sort of thing.
Rowen: Now, accidents can happen history shows that they things which are not in people's self interest sometimes happen.
Rowen: So one has to be ware--be aware of that.
Rowen: But the assumption that an adversary will necessarily try and offset an attempt to protect oneself and succeed in doing so is not necessarily conclusive argument, but for trying to protect themself.
Rowen: The Soviet Union is a very good case in point we saw, during the '60s, huge investment on the Soviet part in their defenses.
Rowen: And in some extent in civil defenses.
Rowen: Why were they doing this? Was it because they simply were mistaken and were wasting a lot of money.
Rowen: They probably were actually wasting a lot of money, but they read it differently.
Rowen: They read the situation as one in which it was rational for them to invest heavily in defenses.
Rowen: And it might well be that they saw more deeply into the problem, than we did, than Kent's study did and than McNamara's which was reflective of McNamara's 1967 speech.
Rowen: Uh, I'm not in—was not--am not in favor of wasting resources on defenses that won't work, but one has to look very carefully at the circumstances in which these defenses might be called on to play—to play--play a role.
Rowen: And so it's not necessarily a decisive argument against them, but oh, yes, the Soviets could do the following and render these render these ineffective.
Rowen: These matters can be somewhat more complicated.
Interviewer: MCNAMARA CAME TO THE CONCLUSION THAT ANYTHING WE DO TO IN TERMS OF DEFENSE WOULD SIMPLY BE MATCHED BY THE SOVIETS WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT KIND OF REASONING?
Rowen: The notion that an--anything we do will be offset by an adversa—by the Soviet Union sort of counter action and then you can add—action reaction, with process, with an upward spiraling of spending and more and more weapons has been a major bi—proposition and assertion often had—had an effect on people's thinking Presidents, Secretaries of Defense,...I'm sure McNamara.
Rowen: It seems to be that you—of--of— often overdone.
Rowen: Uh, one has to ask you know the—the question well, what are our interests.
Rowen: We'd—cause the Soviets do something, do we necessarily have to react to it and offset it.
Rowen: It depends on what our interests are.
Rowen: Uh, the Soviets for example built up an enormous,...defense system.
Rowen: We were wise enough not...
Rowen: The Sov--the Soviets built up an enormous air defense system we ass-we reacted in the sense that we took measures to be assured that we could— our bombers could penetrate that system.
Rowen: We didn't react by building a big air defense system ourselves that would have been a waste of money.
Rowen: Uh, there are many things that pro--that prevent an arms race from—or can prevent make—might prevent uh--uh, an arms race from occurring, the budget reserves are limited for example.
Rowen: Maybe other objectives so automatic arguments said oh, no, we mustn't improve the accuracy of our weapons because this will threaten the Soviets and then they'll take some action and we'll have to go spend--more money.
Rowen: Are often very shallow, they're not really based on an understanding of the--both the constraints that the Soviets have or that we have and what the—what their real interests are.
Rowen: Uh, the fact is that we begin—we—we reduced our spending on strategic offensive forces from a peak in the late '50s, early '60s, very, very substantially during the course of the 1960s.
Rowen: We went—down--and into the '70s.
Rowen: They--our spending on these forces went down a lot.
Rowen: The spending on—on air defenses went down even more, we practically got out of the air defense business.
Rowen: We had a big air defense system in the 1950s.
Rowen: We abolished it pretty much, almost during the '60s.
Rowen: Probably a wise thing to do under the circumstances of the tech—given the technology at the time.
Rowen: What did the Soviets do.
Rowen: One might have assumed that the Soviets would emulate us.
Rowen: This was McNamara's hope I think, that they would say, "Ah Ha, if nuclear weapons are no good let's spend less." The Soviets did exactly the opposite.
Rowen: They spent more during that period of time.
Rowen: They continued to invest in their defenses.
Rowen: They spent more on offensive systems while we were going down.
Rowen: Now what kind of an arms race do you call that? It wasn't an arms race.
Rowen: It was a reverse phenomenon.
Rowen: Later Harold Brown was Secretary of Defense for the--in the Carter Administration uttered an aphorism which is a correct and ( ), "When we spend more the Soviets spend more, we spend less, the Soviets spend more." And that has in fact been the pattern over the course of this last 30–odd years.
Interviewer: AT SOME POINT IN THE LATE '60s...THERE'S NO WAY TO GET OUT OF THIS CONUNDRUM.
Interviewer: DOES THIS MAKE SENSE?
Rowen: Now, the notion that--that a threat to one sides assured destruction capability is going to revoke corrective actions and that if either side tries to do this it'll simply stimulate spending and so on.
Rowen: I mean when—I can understand in a certain framework why that might be so.
Rowen: But that oversimplified the world.
Rowen: There are other things of—of concern.
Rowen: For example, supposed we took it as our principle aim, not, and had taken it at the time--not simply doing a lot of civil damage to the Soviet Union, but corn-simply blocking Soviet armies from being able to invade nucl—uh Western Europe.
Rowen: But it's that component of our strategy that had to do with nuclear forces, might have been focused very much on blocking the Soviet invasion of Western Europe.
Rowen: Um, that's a different, that's not attacking Soviet cities, that's not attacking the Soviet long range nuclear forces, the so-called counterforce mission, that's a different mission.
Rowen: One arguably makes some—sen—one has to bribe the framework and the this reaction phenomenon and this assured destruction--it's too narrow.
Rowen: It's too--it's too narrow a way of looking at it.
Rowen: It's—uh, can lead to very misleading answers.
Rowen: Now, obviously there is a reaction when something specific is what -they can be and one has to take account of this.
Rowen: One isn't dealing with the passive adversary.
Rowen: The Soviet Union is not dealing with a passive United States, one has to take account of what the responses will be.
Rowen: But it should be done within a frame of reference that somehow makes sense, that isn't excessively narrow.
Rowen: And that's been the problem with the basic arms control approach which got a big boost in the--during that period, during the '60s, during the mid and late '60s in particular—is that the frame of reference is generally speaking been too narrow.
Interviewer: ...IS THAT A FRAME WHERE CONSIDERATIONS DIFFERENT FROM HIS ACTION WOULD--FROM THE SENSE OF FUTILITY ABOUT AN ABM SYSTEM...COULD IT BE THAT YOU'RE BOTH RIGHT?
Rowen: Well, then sure, it's possible because the there's a--there are technical questions involved in the ABMs, would they work, for example? Uh...
Interviewer: OR EVEN IF THEY DIDN'T WORK, THE OTHER GUY COULD OVERCOME IT—
Rowen: And—and if he could overcome it easily yeah it's under the--left hand so no problem, then that's an-- that's certainly not much of an argument for them, if it can be can be overcome.
Interviewer: YOUR QUARREL ISN'T WITH HIS RECOGNITION OF THE FUTILITY OF EACH SIDE SPENDING FOR ABM SYSTEMS?
Rowen: Can I make a comment on the ABM business?
Interviewer: ...MAYBE YOU THINK THAT BECAUSE HE RECOGNIZED THE FUTILITY OF AND SAW AN ARMS RACE IN THE ABM AREA THAT HE SORT OF BACKED OFF ON...
Rowen: The ABM was a symptom rather than a cause.
Rowen: I mean he'd already made up his mind that all this stuff was...
Interviewer: REFINEMENTS OF ABUSE OPTIONS ALL TOGETHER.
Rowen: Yeah—he had made up his mind already that this—none of this stuff made much sense because ABM was a just—another thing that didn't make much sense.
Interviewer: MCNAMARA SAW THAT THE ACTION/REACTION PHENOMENON IN TERMS OF ABM, THAT IT WAS JUST MONEY THAT BOTH SIDES ARE GOING TO UH, UH WASTE BECAUSE THE OTHER SIDE CAN EASILY OVERCOME IT.
Rowen: Yes.
Interviewer: NOW, COULD THAT HAVE MADE SENSE IN THE MID-SIXTIES?
Rowen: You know it might have made sense in that period of time not to have invested a lot of money in ABM defenses for uh—it depends on one's judgment of the technology, If it was—looked easy for the Soviets to overcome these defenses by deploys for example one could—might have reasonably concluded it wasn't smart to invest a lot of money...
Rowen: the technical questions they were very debatable questions.
Rowen: But, for there are a number of possible uses, for these defenses, one could use them fo—to protect strategic forces perhaps, or to protect command and control.
Rowen: One didn't need necessarily a very high quality defense in--in order to have useful effect, reducing the confidence of the attacker, the Soviet confidence level that they could penetrate and destroy our strategic force, it was protected by a ABM might itself have-been a useful thing to do.
Rowen: Uh, but it's clear and one doesn't simply want to buy defenses that can be easily—easily offset, but that--that was the debate.
Rowen: The debate was how a large, part of the debate was about how—how would it be to do that.
Rowen: And what criterion should one use in judging them.
Rowen: Now, that's all very of course dependent on the technology of the time.
Rowen: And that technology is changing over—has changed of course greatly over time.
Rowen: But the no, there was obviously some merit in McNamara's position then.
Interviewer: COULD HE HAVE...
Interviewer: DO YOU THINK THAT TURNED HIM OFF ON OTHER SORT OF USE OPTIONS AND THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN USEFUL TO PURSUE?
Rowen: The um, my guess is that the whole idea of refinements and the use of nuclear forces, the types of nuclear forces and their use, including ABM was all part and parcel of the same mindset which, that basically none of this makes much sense.
Rowen: That it is important to have a protected capacity to retaliate.
Rowen: That that, everybody was agreed to.
Rowen: That was not an argument.
Rowen: Beyond that then, people divided and I suppose the idea that the ABM was would be a waste of money was sort of part and parcel of the mindset, it wasn't the ABM in and of itself was sort of maybe uniquely a bad idea, was sort of a part a general view that beyond a certain level of assured destruction, none of this made much sense.
Interviewer: IN THE '50S YOUR CHIEF CONCERN WAS THAT THE US HAVE A CREDIBLE DETERRENCE AND THIS MEANT AN INVULNERABLE RETALIATORY FORCE, SECOND STRIKE CAPABILITY...
Interviewer: WE HAVE THAT IN THE LATE '60S, WHEN MCNAMARA LEFT THE PENTAGON WE HAD THAT, WERE YOU SATISFIED?
Rowen: I believe that in the late '60s, end of the Johnson administration the United States had a good strategic force.
Rowen: We had submarines, we had Minuteman missiles which were sheltered and dispersed, we had bombers that I think do all right.
Rowen: I think our posture was in good shape looking ahead from that vantage point.
Interviewer: ...HOW DID YOU FEEL IN THE LATTER PART OF THE 60S?
Rowen: Our posture, our strategic long—range delivery systems posture was really quite good at that time.
Rowen: We had Minuteman missiles which were sheltered and dispersed and proof against the survivable against the Soviet offensive force at that time.
Rowen: We have submarines, missiles and submarines, clearing at sea, if they were at sea, clearly invulnerable.
Rowen: Our bombers were on alert and had good warning system, we had a very good posture.
Rowen: Over looking ahead one could see trouble coming because the technology keeps evolving and the Soviet Union was not essentially not accepted the notion that all it needed was an assured destruction capacity, it was building up quite a lot.
Rowen: Uh, the intelligence, the community underestimated at the time, systematically and over a long period of time, how much the Soviet Union would build up and the—I certainly didn't fully realize that at the time, I don't think any of us did.
Rowen: But clearly the Soviet Union was getting better.
Rowen: So we could tell that there were going to be problems.
Rowen: In particular one could tell that there were going to be problems with the--the ICBM force, the Minuteman force, because overtime everybody's missiles were getting more accurate and eventually we were going to find some alternative to the Minutemen.
Rowen: The other submarines, it wasn't so clear, and the bombers—cl--that they would run into problems, clear that the--the missile force was going to.
Rowen: In any case at that time we were in good shape, but we were not investing as much for the future as would have been proven to have done.
Rowen: And I think this was again affected by this notion that when all we needed was some assured destruction capacity and we were pretty goo--in quite good shape.
Rowen: And re--perhaps not paying enough attention to the future.
Interviewer: ONCE EACH SIDE HAS AN ASSURED DESTRUCTION CAPABILITY...
Interviewer: ISN'T IT TRUE THAT THEY'RE GOING TO ENSURE--MAKE EVERY EFFORT TO ENSURE THAT ASSURED DESTRUCTION CAPABILITY REMAINS? SO DOESN'T IT BECOME FUTILE FOR THE OTHER GUY TO TRY TO THREATEN IT?
Rowen: It's clear that as time has gone on, everybody is going to work hard at having a protected capacity to retaliate, a protected capacity against any threat that could be opposed.
Rowen: The United States early on in the '50s ran what was very important here, came to that conclusion ever since we have really-we have worked at that.
Rowen: The Soviet Union was very slow in arriving at that because it was—it—it having a well-protected force didn't invest in it very much in--in the '50s or early '60s through the mid-'60s, because apparently it didn't wasn't concerned about an American attack.
Rowen: Over time, the—the British have paid attention to having it--their force protected and their submarines.
Rowen: The same thing with the French, the Chinese, everybody worries now, and has for some time about having a protective capacity.
Rowen: But whether--but the assured destruction part implies being sure to preserve a capacity to do vast civil destruction against the--an adversary, that in general doesn't look to hard to do in a world without ballistic missile defenses and civil defense is very difficult.
Rowen: So one can say yes, they will have that to and that almost sort of comes as a bi-product, but that's a technical — that bas--that base is based on technology, that can change is tech—if your—if it's possible to have a good defenses that could change.
Rowen: How important that is, to have—is not all— it's always taken as fundamental, must-one must have that even though doing it would be insane.
Rowen: Actually killing, attempting to kill tens of millions of people would be insane because one would have the same thing happen to oneself.
Rowen: So that one shouldn't necessarily take that as quite rock granite foundation for the for—for nuclear forces is often assumed.
Rowen: Uh, being able to frustrate a military adventure of an adversary and a certain circumstances would be more important than having the ability to kill millions of people since you're going to want to and actually carry out the execution of millions of people of another country.
Interviewer: WHAT TERMS SHOULD WE HAVE BEEN THINKING IN THE MID- TO LATE '60s IN TERMS OF THE KEY QUESTIONS IN THE NUCLEAR AGE OF MAINTAINING DETERRENCE AND WHAT DO YOU DO IT DETERRENCE FAILS?
Rowen: The key questions in the 1960s really remain man--many of the key questions for today.
Rowen: It was very clear to everybody I think, that the main worry was not somehow the United States and the Soviet Union were going to fall into a war all by themselves, any kind of a war, it was going to involved some other place.
Rowen: It was going to involve Europe or it could conceivably in Japan or some other region--where our interests would come to—to into conflict, into collision.
Rowen: And there over let's say Europe something might get started and it could conceivably could lead to the use of nuclear weapons.
Rowen: The United States had this policy of first use of nuclear weapons of conceivably use them, ever get called upon to use them, how should we do it? At launching an all out strike against the Soviet Union all of its military forces, all of its industries and its people would have resulted in total devastation of the United States clearly an insane thing to do.
Rowen: If we were going to use nuclear weapons in response if ever this policy meant anything, responding to an invasion, was going to on the battlefield in a very limited and precise way, probably very few such weapons.
Rowen: Well supposed the United States didn't hit, maybe the Soviet Union might under certain circumstances use them first.
Rowen: If it did it almost certainly would use them in very small numbers, very precise and discriminate way for some local purpose hoping, believing that it could deter the United States from escalating to a much higher level of violence and destructiveness or if we were to use them we would have the same expectation--we wouldn't use them unless we believed somehow that we could prevent this escalation from occurring.
Rowen: What in so far as nuclear weapons have to be thought about seriously, that's what it's about.
Rowen: It's about other parts of the world.
Rowen: It's not so much about strikes against our respective homelands we have to be able to—to deter that.
Rowen: Maybe deal with it if it ever happens, but certainly to try and deter it and to focus on these much more approximate causes of war which have to do with other parts of the world.
Rowen: That's where the emphasis should be.
Rowen: It's not been entirely neglected.
Rowen: But in a lot of the debate that went on during the latter 1960s and in a lot the debate since then, somehow doesn't reflect adequately, that's where they main problem was, you sort of loose site of that and you have a feeling that somehow there's this abstract bilateral bipolar confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union over all of these matters and nuclear forces and so on and that's just not true at all." They're not going to fall into fighting to each other.
Rowen: It's going to be over some other place.
Rowen: It might be the Persian Gulf, it might be the center of Europe, it might be somewhere else and that's where we should be focusing so much of our attention.
Rowen: We do have to worry about having a survivable force.
Rowen: We have to worry about all of these overarching issues that people discussed and pay attention to them, make sure they're taken care of.
Rowen: But the main place where things might actually happen —I mean really happen is elsewhere in the world, and that's where we have to be focusing a lot of our attention.
Interviewer: SAY WHAT YOU MEAN BY FOCUSING OUR ATTENTION...
Rowen: When I say focusing our attention on these other...
Interviewer: I'D LOVE IT IF YOU WOULD SAY...
Rowen: At the end of the '60s we had a clearly an ability to wreak, vast devastation on the Soviet Union.
Rowen: Uh, it had such a an ability against the United States that was protective, it's missiles that had submarine missiles and had—it could do a lot of damage to the United States.
Rowen: We had a sort of self-deterrent.
Rowen: We each could deter that--uh a pretty good shot at deterring any such a—attack on each other, as a result of our respective investments.
Rowen: But the main problems really had to do with events that could occur elsewhere in the world, that could occur in Europe, in which we might get called upon to use nuclear weapon, we might be faced with an overwhelming attack.
Rowen: We had a policy of using nuclear weapons first.
Rowen: How would we use them in a way that wouldn't result in total devastation? Clearly against Soviet military forces selectively in ways that would give the Soviets an interest, a stake in not escalating, The Soviets might use them first, believing that they could gain some advantage and coerce us and prevent us from upping the bidding, responding with a much larger attack.
Rowen: Those are the main problems.
Rowen: These were not--have not gotten the attention that they deserved and above all of course we won't prevent any use of nuclear weapons at all, through having an of a conventional force, but there was always the possibility of the nuclear weapons being used, paying attention to the nuclear par—cases here meant command and control, protective forces now relating to Europe or other parts of the world.
Rowen: Precision, much smaller yield warheads.
Rowen: Constraints, avoiding fallout, avoiding all these terrible weapon effects that could spill over and cause a to get out of control.
Rowen: That's the sort of thing which was not entirely neglected, I don't mean to suggest it was entirely neglected but that's where the attention needed to be focused and really has needed to be focused more than worries about these big, huge exchanges which are probably adequately deterred as a result of all the efforts that have been made.