HERR JOFFE I'M GOING TO START OFF BY ASKING YOU A QUESTION ABOUT PUBLIC OPINION PARTICULARLY IN GERMANY DURING THE EARLY YEARS OF THE 1980s. THERE IS AN APPARENT PARADOX, ISN'T THERE, THAT AFTER 1980, AFTER THE DECISION TO DEPLOY, THE PEACE MOVEMENT BEGINS, EUROPE SEEMS TO BE SORT OF EXPLODING IN ANGER, PEOPLE LIKE PAUL NITZE GET VERY WORRIED THAT DEPLOYMENT CAN ACTUALLY TAKE PLACE AT ALL, THEN IN 1983 THERE IS AN ELECTION, THERE ARE TWO ELECTIONS, GOVERNMENTS ARE RETURNED IN FAVOR OF DEPLOYMENT AND DEPLOYMENT HAPPENS? HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THIS APPARENT PARADOX?

The paradox is as usual an apparent one because it's easy to explain. The most important thing to remember is that anti-nuclearism is not an election-determining issue, so the parties on the left both in Britain and in West Germany went out on a limb on an anti-nuclear platform, got trounced, not just trounced but that they got really trounced dramatically throwing them back to 20, 30 years in their electoral fortunes. The reason for this is this: the nuclear issue is something that people don't know very much about, and they don't care very much about. If you look at public opinion what we had here is the revolt of a small self-selected elite with a lot of support in the press but with virtually little, virtually no support in the vast public that decides elections. And so we had both in 1983, and in 1987 both in Britain and in Germany, the parties of the left who were waving the anti-nuclear flag, being very badly beaten.

THE PEACE MOVEMENT WOULD TURN THAT AROUND AND THEY'D SAY THAT NUCLEAR DECISION MAKING HAD HITHERTO BEEN THE PRESERVE OF A SMALL ELITE, THAT BY TAKING POPULAR ACTION BY GOING ON THE STREETS, BY USING FORMS OF TRADITIONAL MEDIA THAT THE TELEVISION AND SO ON HAD OVERTAKEN, THEY WERE ABLE TO BRING PUBLIC OPINION TO BEAR ON THIS QUESTION.

In the German case, and as far as the numbers are concerned, is absolutely wrong. And the reason I say it is this, in '81 before the peace movement really got into full swing and in '83 the same question was asked to the respondents and you virtually had no change in public opinion though the peace movement went to full gear, the campaign went all over the place, marches in Bonn and everything. What happened, the numbers tell you, is that just as in '81 you had in '83, the same number of those who say "I don't care," those who said "I don't know," and those who were in support of the two-track decision. The point here is that the electorate remained virtually immune to the campaign of the few.

WHY DO YOU THINK THAT WAS?

As I said, nuclear weapons are so complicated they are so arcane, that your man in the street, who also happens to be the man who decides elections, doesn't understand it, therefore doesn't pay attention to it, and therefore and least of all, is swayed in his electoral choice for or against a certain party.

THANK YOU. WHAT YOU'VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT OF COURSE WAS THE TWO MAJOR SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTIES. THE BRITISH LABOUR PARTY AND THE GERMAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY AS IT WERE OPTING OUT OF THE SO-CALLED PRO-NUCLEAR CONSENSUS. DO YOU THINK THAT IT MATTERS THAT PRO-NUCLEAR CONSENSUS DISAPPEAR?

Of course it matters, it always matters when a consensus on defense, which in Western Europe had held out for 20, 30 years, if it shatters, especially if this takes place in the arena of defense, but you notice that if you lose two elections as Labour and the German Social Democrats have done, there is that very slow process evident in both countries with those two parties who after all are in the business of power rather than ideology, very slowly creeping back to the center.

LET ME MOVE ON NOW TO THE EVENTS, TO THE MORE RECENT EVENTS. LET'S START BY TALKING ABOUT REYKJAVIK. WHY WAS THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT SO HORRIFIED AT WHAT HAPPENED AT REYKJAVIK? WHAT WERE THEY HOPING WOULD HAPPEN AT REYKJAVIK?

First of all European Governments are always horrified when the two big powers get together and they are even more horrified when those two big powers end up almost agreeing on Europe and without Europe. That shocked not only the German government, it shocked every other government, it certainly shocked the French government. What they expected, I don't know but the basic problem to remember here is that not so much the substance of the agreement but the fact of the agreement as Monsieur Chirac put it, once more Europe's fate is decided without Europe.

LET ME EXTRACT ONE STRAND IN ALL THIS WHICH IS THE KIND OF REVIVAL OF THE SO-CALLED ZERO OPTION. I MUST SAY I'M A BIT VAGUE ABOUT THIS, CAN YOU JUST EXPLAIN HOW IT WAS THAT THE ZERO OPTION SUDDENLY REAPPEARED?

That's easy, we, NATO invented it back in 1981 thinking that the Russians would never be so "stupid" as to accept it and suddenly there was a new Russian leader by the name of Gorbachev who was "stupid" enough to accept it six years later, at that point it was very hard for Western governments to go back on something they had been demanding for six years.

OK NOW WHAT I'D LIKE YOU TO DO PLEASE IS TO TALK US THROUGH WHAT'S BEEN HAPPENING SINCE THEN AND HOW THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT HAS BEEN FEELING ABOUT REACTING IN OTHER WORDS I AM TALKING ABOUT THE DOUBLE ZERO AND THE PERSHING IAs, IF YOU CAN JUST TALK US THROUGH THAT.

The German government, and I may add the French and other NATO governments, were none too happy once they were caught on the horns of their own zero proposition but there was no way of backing out of it. Then suddenly the next zero appeared on the horizon, which was something which drove an implicit wedge at least between West Germany and the two European nuclear powers. The West Germans were suddenly, it suddenly dawned on the West Germans that if zero number one and zero number two go through, then the bulk of nuclear weapons that remains in place either is hosted in, or destined to explode in Germany. That Germany was suddenly caught between what they call firewalls, a neatly demarcated war in Central Europe and Central Europe only. So then the West Germans realized oh we still have a bunch of older missiles called the Pershing IA which are not American missiles, they are German missiles though with American warheads, and they thought wouldn't it be nice idea to keep those if not to modernize those, so that we will have at least some ballistic missiles which can strike beyond Germany and therefore help to deter the members of the Warsaw Pact. Unfortunately that didn't work because in the meantime as Chancellor Kohl found out this year, he was facing a strange coalition of bed fellows all determined to get rid of the Pershing IA and that coalition consisted of Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, Maggie Thatcher and Monsieur Mitterrand and once you are faced with this kind of coalition, you'd better yield because the basic rule of German foreign policy is don't oppose both of your most important allies, America and France at the same time and don't do that while you are also opposing a most important opponent, which is Russia.

WERE THE GERMANS BITTER, DO THE GERMANS FEEL BITTER, WHEN I SAY THE GERMANS I MEAN THE GOVERNMENT OBVIOUSLY, AT THE WAY IN WHICH THEIR ALLIES BEHAVED OVER THIS PERIOD OF TIME?

I think that the Christian Democrats, the main coalition party, does feel bitter about it because they had expected, if not the Americans, at least the British and the French to come to their aid and stop to break the momentum of de-nuclearization. There are some obvious reasons why the French and the British didn't do so. They are mainly concerned about protecting their own strategic nuclear weapons from this Reykjavik process and they are interested mainly in maintaining a tactical American nuclear presence in West Germany which is the Eastern [glasse] so there is a certain kind of bitterness because the West Germans were, or feel they were left out in the cold, and I would certainly hope that as a result, we don't get right-wing anti-Americanism, now joining hands with the kind of left-wing anti-Americanism that has been evident for the past five years.

WITHOUT BEING VERY WEEKEND WORLD-Y CAN I JUST ASK YOU THE QUESTION BEFORE LAST AGAIN, BECAUSE YOU COUGHED A LOT IN THE ANSWER, WHICH WAS A VERY GOOD ANSWER, WHERE YOU TOOK US THROUGH FROM POST REYKJAVIK, BUT COULD I, THE ONE BEFORE...

That was a very long answer, could we break it down a little bit?

LET ME JUST ASK YOU TWO SUPPLEMENTARY QUESTIONS, I WON'T ASK YOU THE WHOLE THING ALL OVER AGAIN. I'LL JUST SPLIT IT UP INTO ONE OR TWO BITS. WHY WAS THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT NOT PARTICULARLY HAPPY ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED IN THE SHULTZ-SHEVARDNADZE TALKS WHICH PRODUCED THE DOUBLE ZERO PROPOSAL, THAT WASN'T WHAT THE GERMANS HAD EXPECTED TO HAPPEN, AND WHY WERE THEY UNHAPPY?

I'm not sure whether the question is right. It would require me to figure out what the Germans and the Shultz and the rest were thinking and so on. I would advise leaving it out.

LET ME PUT YOU A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT QUESTION ON THAT SAME TERRITORY. WHY WERE THEY SIMPLY UNHAPPY WITH WHAT HAD HAPPENED AT THAT POINT WITH THE FACT THAT WAS NOW A DOUBLE ZERO?

Well it is part of the Reykjavik syndrome, if you are a smallish dependent of one of the superpowers, certainly a dependent in terms of nuclear security, there is two things you really worry about, one is, if there is too much fighting and screaming between the two superpowers because that makes life difficult for you, and the other one is the opposite, if there is too much camaraderie between the two superpowers because as in this case, they're inevitably going to talk about matters that affect your security, which is precisely what is happening in the matter of the Pershing IA. I mean Shultz and Shevardnadze were frying bigger fish and they had to get those 72 obsolescent Pershing IAs out of the way and the Germans were ultimately asked by both, though subtly, subtly, not to stand in the way of a "historic" arms control deal.

SO IS IT FAIR TO SAY THAT THE GERMANS GAVE GROUND BECAUSE OF AMERICAN PRESSURE OR BECAUSE OF EVIDENCE OF GERMAN PUBLIC OPINION IN LOCAL ELECTIONS AND SO ON?

I'm not sure, and the question is very hard to resolve because you have two factors, an internal one and external ones, pointing in the same direction. But given my understanding of the course of German foreign policy, I would opt for the external factors as being the decisive ones and the rule here simply is that being where they are, being as dependent as they are, both on the East and the West by the way, on the West for security and on the East for access to East Germany, détente good feelings that no German government whether left or right can afford to go both against its Western allies and its Eastern opponents and once that constellation was in place the conclusion was pretty much foregone.

WHEN WE SPOKE BEFORE YOU DESCRIBED QUITE WELL THE DILEMMA, THE ENIGMA, THE DILEMMA THAT CHANCELLOR KOHL FOUND HIMSELF IN AND HOW HE HAD TO WRIGGLE FOR A WHILE. CAN YOU DESCRIBE THAT PROCESS FOR US? IT WAS THROUGHOUT THE SUMMER, CHANCELLOR KOHL HAD TO WORK OUT WHETHER THERE WAS ANYTHING HE COULD DO OR NOT AND SENT AMBASSADORS AROUND THE WORLD.

The basic principle I think an operationally can be put like this, the shorter the ranges the deader the Germans, so for Chancellor Kohl there was a pressing interest in stopping the de-nuclearization process say short off double zero. He wanted to keep at least some weapons in the game, the Pershing IAs which are longer range and which can strike into Warsaw Pact territory. All summer in the year of 1987 he tried, which German foreign policy always does in a case like this, he tried to rustle up the support of your most important allies. Now he dispatches people to Washington, Paris and London and this is the message they came back with. In Washington people were, to put it mildly, quite eager to come to an arms-control agreement with the Russians, Pershing IA must not stand in the way. In Britain he faced Mrs. Thatcher who was in turn facing an election, and was not going to fight Mr. Kohl's battles for him and maybe lose her own battle at home. In France he faced a divided Government, Mitterrand Socialist who was also preparing for another election and didn't want to be stuck with the nuclear baggage and a conservative prime minister who was more sympathetic but who didn't have the power to swing France on to the German side and so his emissaries came back and reported and there was Mr. Kohl who, if nothing else, is a man who understands the facts, and understand when battles are lost, and so he came up with what I think is the best decision under the circumstances which is: OK we won't stand in the way with our Pershing IAs, once the Russians and Americans have an agreement, once it's ratified, once all the missiles are withdrawn, the big ones, then the Pershing IAs go too.

HERR JOFFE, WE MENTIONED BRIEFLY THE FACTOR OF DOMESTIC PUBLIC OPINION HERE, DO YOU THINK THAT THE DOMESTIC POLITICS OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN GERMANY AND IN WESTERN EUROPE HAVE BEEN COMPLETELY TRANSFORMED OR DO YOU THINK THEY WILL QUIETLY, IF EVERYTHING IS LEFT WELL ALONE, THEY WILL QUIETLY REVERT TO AS IT WERE WHAT THEY WERE BEFORE 1977, OR DO YOU THINK THAT THINGS HAVE CHANGED?

I am not sure but I can tell you first of all that the picture throughout Western Europe is really quite different. You have probably the most anti-nuclearism in Britain and of course the least anti-nuclearism in France, with the Germans somewhere in between. Second, I don't think that anti-nuclearism has taken hold in the electorate, it doesn't show up in those very rough, of course, public opinion figures you get out of samples of 2,000. The most important question which is going to decide all of this is what the role of parties is going to be, precisely because the populace itself does not articulate nuclear positions because they don't understand them, they don't care enough about them. The important thing is what are the leaders trying to say, are they going to persist on the anti-nuclear campaign or not and here the democratic left faces a classic dilemma, if you've lost two successive elections because you went out on a limb on anti-nuclear issues, will you persist on losing issues and my sense is that the democratic left is already and will return to the center and once that happens given the decisive impact of leadership opinion on the populace that the anti-nuclear issues will at least be muted, they'll never disappear.

OK, TWO OR THREE QUESTIONS NOW ABOUT WHAT THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS WHICH YOU WROTE A BOOK ABOUT WHICH WE ARE MAKING A PROGRAMME ABOUT, WHAT THEY AMOUNT TO. THIS IS A STORY WHICH BEGINS WITH SCHMIDT BEING WORRIED ABOUT SALT II, IT ENDS WITH KOHL BEING WORRIED ABOUT AN INF DEAL, DO GERMANS NOW FEEL THAT THE AMERICAN NUCLEAR GUARANTEE IS IN DOUBT?

I don't know what the Germans feel because as I said, the Germans don't have any feelings or opinions on nuclear strategy, even the experts have stopped understanding those gyrations. I can tell you what I feel which is that I think would have been better off if we had kept some long-range INF in Western Europe just to give the Soviets a pause in case they were foolish enough to contemplate an attack, but I don't think as some of the more excited people on the right in this country feel that because the INF may be gone, the Germans are going to be left out in the cold. We still have an awful lot of nuclear weapons in Western Europe, we still have an awful lot of nuclear weapons, mainly bombs, which can reach deep into Warsaw Pact territory and even the Soviet Union and finally and most importantly we have a hell of a lot of American soldiers right on the battle line and that American contingent spells out the most important deterrence messages of them all. If you attack West Germany you have to attack a sizable group of American soldiers and that poses risks which you may not want to take.

SO YOU'RE NOT ONE OF THOSE WHO FEEL THAT FLEXIBLE RESPONSE IS NOW DEAD.

I don't know about flexible response, but I don't think that extended deterrence is dead for reason which I've outlined, which is as long as the United States.

BUT WHAT ABOUT FLEXIBLE RESPONSE?

Can I ask you a question, what do you mean by flexible response?

WELL I MEAN THAT STRATEGY WHICH WAS FELT TO HAVE WEAKNESSES IN IT WHICH CAUSED THE 1979 DECISION AS MUCH AS ANYTHING ELSE DID, NOW THEY'VE TAKEN OUT THAT MIDDLE-RUNG STUFF, WHERE DOES NOT LEAVE THE STRATEGY?

Do I have to answer this question?

NOT IF YOU DON'T WANT TO.

It's going to go very complicated, I mean the basic point is what I said before, I'll talk about the core of flexible response, the deterrence.

WHERE DOES THIS DEAL LEAVE FLEXIBLE RESPONSE, THE 1979 DEAL, AMONG OTHER THINGS, HAD THE PURPOSE OF MAKING FLEXIBLE RESPONSE WORK MILITARILY, THOSE INGREDIENTS HAVE NOW BEEN REMOVED, WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE THE STRATEGY OF FLEXIBLE RESPONSE?

I was never a great believer in flexible response as annunciated, because flexible response essentially requires what the experts call "escalation dominance," that no matter how the tit-for-tat goes, we can go one tit better than the Soviets. We haven't been able to do this for the past 25 years, since parity. So I'm concerned about something else, which is, not what we can do, but what goes on in the minds of the Soviets as they contemplate war against Western Europe? What are the risk calculations? What can we do to make those risks calculations a bit more risky for them? Now it is quite clear one of the reasons why Gorbachev gave away 1,500 warheads of his for 400 warheads of ours is that the Russians were afraid of the INF presence in Western Europe which could demolish part of their country. They are so afraid of it that they were willing to give away a great deal more than they got in return. So in terms of extended deterrence, I think this is bad that INF went. Will extended deterrents collapse as a result? I don't think so, because... I would like to evoke the old Denis Healey theorem, who said, "While it takes 95 percent credibility to reassure allies, it may only take 5 percent credibility to scare off adversaries." And I think those 5 percent are still there, with a lot of American troops, with a lot of American nuclear weapons which, no matter how many INF have gone, still pose unbearable risks for the Russians and still signal to the Russians you can't count on a small war in Central Europe, you have to count on a big one. And that is the essence of extended deterrence in Europe. That was more than 45 seconds.

IT WAS A VERY GOOD ANSWER.

It is a very good question, that's precisely why I'm not so sure whether it will work in little sound bites... There is of course an insoluble problem in nuclear alliances where very big powers protect with their nuclear weapons a bunch of small to middling ones, which is that the small to middling powers will always suspect the fealty of their patrons. That is an irreducible dilemma of nuclear alliances because nuclear weapons impose such horrific, horrific costs on nations which give guarantees to non-nuclear nations, but we've lived with that since the early '60s since the beginning of parity between the two superpowers. Will the events of Reykjavik to double zero increase those anxieties of the dependents as to whether their patron powers are reliable? Yes, of course they will. But what are the consequences? I'd like to talk about consequences in a larger framework than say this month or next month. And here would keep in mind a basic feature of the post-war international system which is that America is Western Europe's natural ally and that the West Europeans no matter how many noises they are making, are not neither willing nor really capable of defending themselves, so they need that transatlantic counter-balancing weight and the United States needs Western Europe as the most important strategic weight in the global balance and that's why I think that these over-arching interests which keep the alliance together will, at least I hope, will maintain the alliance even in the face of yet another phase of superpower big two-ism. Those phases come and go too, but the basic glue that has held the alliance together is not likely to disappear in our lifetime.